“Take the six-foot rule. It’s common sense that the farther apart people are—remember our imaginary hermits in hazmat suits in South Dakota—the less likely they are to pass an infection to each other. The coronavirus seemed especially deadly in many places with high population density, such as New York City. But what’s so special about six feet? As it turns out, not that much.
Experts agree that we can pass the flu virus either by contact (as when snotty hands touch a handrail, which is touched by other hands) or by droplets (spray from a cough) or by aerosol (microscopic mist from coughs, sneezes, or speech). We know that aerosol particles can stay suspended in air for hours, and small droplets for minutes. https://www.journalofinfection.com/article/S0163-4453(10)00347-6/fulltext
Yet for years public health officials have downplayed airborne transmission. A WHO document, for instance, describes how larger droplets are “assumed to be the main mode of transmission for influenza.” That’s a key assumption, since the six-foot separation rule hinges on it.
That applies to the coronavirus as much as to the flu. A study published during the pandemic showed that the new coronavirus, like the earlier SARS-CoV-1, hangs in the air for over an hour in aerosol form.
Even for protection against large droplets, the recommended distance varies. WHO said 1 meter, or about 3 feet, a number the CDC agreed with because of SARS research.
So the six-foot rule is cold comfort. If you walk through a grocery aisle where an infected person was speaking a minute or two earlier, you’ll probably inhale small droplets or aerosol particles from that person. Outdoors, where even a gentle breeze quickly sweeps aerosols away, your odds are much better. That fits with a recent report that coronavirus transmission to multiple people almost always happens indoors.” https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.04.20053058v1
«The freedom toward which democracy strives is not the romantic freedom of adolescent dreams; it is one of mature stature. Democracy insists on sacrifices which are necessary to maintain freedom. It tries to combat the fears that attack men when they are faced with democracy’s apparently unlimited freedom. Such lack of limitations can be misused to satisfy mere instinctual drives.
However, because democracy does not exploit man by myth, primitive magic, mass hypnotism, or other psychological means of seduction, it is less fascinating to the immature individual than is dictatorial control. Democracy, when it is not involved in a dramatic struggle for survival, may appear quite drab and uninspiring.
It simply demands that men shall think and judge for themselves; that each individual shall exercise his full conscious ability in adapting to a changing world; and that genuine public opinion shall mold the laws that govern the community. Essentially, democracy means the right to develop yourself and not to be developed by others. Yet this right like every other, has to be balanced by a duty.
The right to develop yourself is impossible without the duty of giving your energy and attention to the development of others. Democracy is rooted not only in the personal rights of the common man, but even more in the personal interests and responsibilities of the common man. When he loses this interest in politics and government, he helps to pave the road to power politics. Democracy demands mental activity of a rather high level from the common man.
What the general public digests and assimilates in its mind is, in our new era of mass communication, just as important as the dictates of the experts. If the latter formulate and communicate ideas beyond the common grasp, they will talk into a vacuum. Thus they may permit a more simple and even an untrue ideology to slip in. It is not enough that an idea is only formulated and printed; we have to take care that the public can participate in the new concept.
The mystery of freedom is the existence of that great love of freedom! Those who have tasted it will not waver. Man revolts against unfair pressure. While the pressure accumulates he revolts silently, but at some critical moment it bursts into open revolt. For those who have lived through such an outburst, freedom is life itself. We have learned this especially in the days of persecution and occupation, in the underground, in the camps, and under the threat of demagoguery. We can even discover it in the totalitarian countries where nonetheless the terror, the resistance goes on.
Like adolescents who try to hide behind the aprons of parental authority rather than face mature adulthood, the individual members of a democratic state may shrink from the mental activity it imposes. They long to take flight into a condition of thoughtless security. Often they would prefer the government, or some individual personification of the state, to solve their problems for them. It is this desire that makes totalitarians and conformists.
Like an infant the conformist can sleep quietly and transfer all his worries to Father State. When the intellectuals lose their self-control and courage and are possessed only by their fears and emotions, the power of those with prejudice and stupidity gains.
Since within each of us lie the seeds of both democracy and totalitarianism, the struggle between the democratic and the totalitarian attitude is fought repeatedly by each individual during his lifetime. His particular view of himself and of his fellow men will determine his political creed.
Coexisting with man’s wish for liberty and maturity are destructiveness, hate, the desire for power, resistance to independence, and the wish to retreat into irresponsible childhood. Democracy appeals only to the adult side of man; fascism and totalitarianism tempt his infantile desires.
Totalitarianism is based on a mechanized narrow view of mankind. It denies the complexity of the individual, and the struggle between his conscious and unconscious motivations. It denies doubt, ambivalence, and contradiction of feelings. It simplifies man, making him into a machine that can be put to work by governmental oil.
The individual has to decide whether or not he will grow up. The knowledge and insight he has gained have to be translated into action. By this time he knows more about himself; his life has become an open book to him. Although he understands himself better, he finds it difficult to leave the dreamland of childhood, with its fantasies, hero-worship, and happy endings. But, fortified with a deeper understanding of his inner motivation, he steps over into the world of self-chosen responsibility and limited freedom. Because his image of the world is no longer distorted by immature longings, he is now able to function in it as a mature adult.
Systematic education toward freedom is possible. Freedom grows as the control over destructive inner drives become internalized and no longer depend on control from the outside, on control by parents and authorities.
It is the building up of our personality and our conscience—ego and superego—that is important. Nor can this development be brought about in an enforced and compulsive way as tyrants and dictators try to do. We must develop it through free acceptance or rejection of existing moral values until the inner moral person in us is so strong that he is able to go beyond existing values and can stand on his own moral grounds.
The choice in favor of freedom lies between self-chosen limitation—the liberation from chaos—and the pseudo-freedom of unconscious chaos. To many people freedom is an emotional concept of letting themselves go, which really means a dictatorship by dark, instinctual drives. There is also an intellectual concept of freedom, meaning a limiting of bondage and unfreedom.
In order to become free, certain outside conditions must be prevented from hampering this moral development of self-control. We have to become increasingly aware of the internal dangers of democracy: laxity, laziness, and unawareness. People have to be aware of the tendency of technology to automatize their minds.
They have to become aware of the fact that mass media and modern communication are able to imprint all kinds of suggestions on our brains. They have to know that education can turn us either into weak fact-factories or strong personalities. A free democracy has to fight against mediocrity in order not to be smothered by mere numbers of automatic votes.
Democratic freedom requires a highly intelligent appraisal and understanding of the democratic system itself. This very fact makes it difficult for us to advertise or “promote” it. Furthermore, inculcating democracy is just as dangerous as inculcating totalitarianism. It is the essence of democracy that it must be self-chosen, it cannot be imposed.
The paradox of freedom:
Freedom and planning present no essential contrasts. In order to let freedom grow, we have to plan our controls over the forces that limit freedom. Beyond this, we must have the passion and the inner freedom to prosecute those who abuse freedom.
We must have the vitality to attack those who commit mental suicide and psychic murder through abuse of liberties, dragging down other persons in their wake. Suicidal submission is a kind of subversion from within; it is passive surrender to a mechanized world without personalities; it is the denial of personality.
We must have the fervor to stand firmly for freedom of the individual, for mutual tolerance and dignity, and we must learn not to tolerate the destruction of these values. We must not tolerate those who make use of worthy ideas and values only to destroy them as soon as they are in power. We must be intolerant of these abuses as long as the battle for mental life or death goes on.
It cannot be emphasized too strongly that liberty is only possible with a strong set of beliefs and moral standards. This means that man has to adhere to self-restrictive rules—moral rules—in order to keep his freedom. When there is lack of such internal checks, owing to lack of education or to stereotyped education, then external pressure or even tyranny becomes necessary to check unsocial drives. Then freedom becomes the victim of man’s inability to live in freedom and self-control.
Mankind should be guaranteed the right not to hear and not to conform and the right to defense against psychological attack and against intervention in the form of perverted mass propaganda, totalitarian pressure, and mental torture. No compromise or appeasement is possible in dealing with such attitudes. We have to watch carefully lest our own mistakes in attacking personal freedom become grist for the totalitarian’s mill. Even our denunciation may have a paradoxical effect.
Fear and hysteria further totalitarianism. What we need is careful analysis and understanding of such phenomena. Democracy is the regime of the dignity of man and his right to think for himself, the right to have his own opinion— more than that, the right to assert his own opinion and to protect himself against mental invasion and coercion.
Democratic self-government is determined by restraint and self-limitations, by sportsmanship and fairness, by voluntary observance of the rules of society and by cooperation. These qualities come through training.
In a democratic government those who have been elected to responsible positions request controls and limitations against themselves, knowing that no one is without fault. Democracy is not a fight for independence but a mutually regulated interdependence. Democracy means checking man’s tendency to gather unlimited power unto himself. It means checking the faults in each of us. It minimizes the consequences of man’s limitations.
Let me repeat what I said at the very beginning of this book. The modern techniques of brainwashing and menticide—those perversions of psychology—can bring almost any man into submission and surrender.
Many of the victims of thought control, brainwashing, and menticide that we have talked about were strong men whose minds and wills were broken and degraded. But although the totalitarians use their knowledge of the mind for vicious and unscrupulous purposes, our democratic society can and must use its knowledge to help man to grow, to guard his freedom, and to understand himself.»
Utdrag fra: Joost A. M. Meerloo. «The Rape of the Mind: The Psychology of Thought Control, Menticide, and Brainwashing 1956»
“De fleste mennesker i vårt land er alt for opptatt av seg selv til virkelig å kunne gå inn i andres livssituasjon.
De fleste mennesker bruker sin energi på å oppnå stadig mer velstand, stadig mer fritid og stadig mer selvrealisering.
De viker resignert unna om deres sosiale samvittighet mot formodning skulle dukke opp til overflaten. De fleste mennesker nyter – og tier.
De tier om politisk korrupsjon, om økende sosial urettferdighet om det stadig kaldere klimaet i vårt samfunn. De åpner bare munnen når de føler seg sitt personlige revir, sin hardt tilkjempede velstand truet.
Solidaritet er kun noe vi viser når det går på pengepungen løs. Da oppdager vi plutselig våre demokratiske rettigheter.
Vi er et folk av egoister. Utfoldelse, personlig materiell status, personlig lykke er i dag viktigere for oss enn spørsmålet “hvordan går det med de andre?” I vår kretsing om oss selv har vi fullstendig tapt synet av at vi slett ikke kan eksistere uten våre medmennesker.
Den som bare interesserer seg for sin karriere, som holder kroppen i toppform, som ikke skyr noe middel for å holde etthvert fysisk eller psykisk aldringstegn unna, som bruker en stor del av inntektene på trimutstyr – en slik person har virkelige en heldagsjobb! Det blir ikke mye energi igjen til å sysle med de virkelig presserende problemene i vår tid.
Vårt liv er blitt til en tredemølle, der vi i konkurranse med andre presenterer resultatet av vårt arbeid med jeg èt. Hensikten og målet med denne forestillingen er å bli bedre enn konkurrenten – oppnå mer anerkjennesle, mer suksess, mer velstand.
Vi tror at alt dette er utrykk for vår frie vilje og grad av selvrealisering, men i virkeligheten er vi ikke annet enn perfekte fungerende marionetter i et samfunn som styrker oss i denne troen, og som samtidig sørger for at vi ikke forlater denne oppsatte ruten.”
Fra boken “Vår tids egoisme” av Ursula Nuber, Kolibri forlag, 1994
Her finner du 57 filmer som viser mennesker i vanskelige situasjoner som har stor indre styrke og som klarer å stå i mot presset de er utsatt for. Her snakker vi om inspirasjonskilder på høyt nivå.
“Mot er en persons eller gruppes evne til å være modig, uredd og våge å utfordre seg selv til noe som vanligvis utløser angst, frykt, smerte, risiko, usikkerhet eller intimidering. Begrepet knyttes til selvtillit og en evne til å vise djervhet.” https://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mot_(egenskap)
“Ordet integritet blir særlig brukt om en persons selvstendige og ukrenkelige individualitet. Integritet brukes også om det å ha faste, upåvirkelige holdninger.” https://snl.no/integritet
En del av filmene under her kan man finne online. Google tittelen og årstallet filmen er produsert for å finne ut om den er tilgjengelig eller ikke. Lookmovie, Solarmovie, m4uhd og Justwatch er noen steder man kan finne disse filmene nettet. Vil man ha filmene på dvd eller bluray så finnes det flere nettbutikker der mange av titlene kan kjøpes, f.eks. platekompaniet.no, skvis.no, cdon.com, ginsa.se, ebay.co.uk. Man kan også finne filmene i bruktbutikker og på finn.no.
12 edsvorne menn (12 angry men) – 1957 – Henry Fonda
Alle presidentens menn – 1976 – Robert redford
Amazing Grace – 2006 – Ioan Gruffudd
And justice for all (Loven er lik for alle) – 1979 – Al Pacino
Arn tempelridderen – 2007 – Joakim Nætterqvist
Arn riket ved veiens ende – 2008 – Joakim Nætterqvist
Best man, the – 1964 – Henry Fonda
The Black Phone – 2021 – Ethan Hawke
Braveheart – 1995 – Mel Gibson
Brubaker – 1980 – Robert Redford
Captain America the first avenger – 2011 – Chris Evans
Captain America the winter soldier – 2014 – Chris Evans
Casualties of war (De kalte oss helter) – 1989 – Michael J Fox
City hall – 1996 – John Cusack
Class action – 1990 – Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio
Defendor – 2009 – Woody Harrelson
Det lille huset på prærien (Little House on the Prairie)
– 1974-1983 – 9 sesonger – Michael Landon
Divergent – 2014 – Shailene Woodley
Insurgent – 2015 – Shailene Woodley
Allegiant – 2016 – Shailene Woodley
Drep ikke en sangfugl (To kill a mockingbird) – 1962 – Gregory Peck
Døden på Alcatraz – 1995 – Kevin Bacon
Edge of tomorrow – 2014 – Tom Cruise
Even the rain – 2010 – Luis Tosar
Free State of Jones – 2016 – MatthewMcConaughey
Gladiator – 1992 – James Marshall
Gladiator – 2000 – Russell Crowe
Good night, and good luck – 2005 – David Straithairn
Gracie`s choice – 2004 – Kristen Bell
The giver – 2014 – Brenton Thwaites
Hannah Arendt – 2012 – Barbara Sukowa
Guttene fra St. Jude (Song for a raggy boy) – 2003 – Aidan Quinn
Hotel Rwanda – 2004 – Don Cheadle, Nick Nolte
I, Daniel Blake – 2016 – Dave Johns
Idealisten – 2015 – Peter Plaugborg
Invitation to hell – 1984 – Robert Urich – kan sees på youtube
It`s a wonderful life – 1946 – James Stewart
JFK – 1991 – Kevin Costner
Lady Jane – 1986 – Helena Bonham Carter, Cary Elwes
Last of the Mohicans, the – 1992 – Daniel Day Lewis
Matewan – 1987 – David Straithairn
Mr. Smith goes to Washington – 1939 – James Stewart
Aldri har jeg sett en film som til de grader forteller sannheten om hvor korrupt det politiske miljøet, storfinansen og media er, og det gjøres med humor og glimt i øyet så man mer enn en gang får latterkrampe. Filmen er så politisk ukorrekt som det går an å bli og den ville hatt en like stor sjanse til å bli produsert i dag som en snøball sjanse til å overleve i helvete. Anbefales på det sterkeste! https://olehartattordet.blogg.no/bulworth-den-mest-politisk-ukorrekte-filmen-som-er-produsert.html
